In my last post I laid out the foundation of the Buddha's teaching, commonly known as The Four Noble Truths. It was mentioned that this is sometimes translated as The Four
Ennobling Truths, which is the translation I prefer because it is more accurate, but more importantly, because it puts the emphasis on the individual where it belongs. The phrase in the original Pali dialect is
Cattari Ariya Saccani (Sanskrit: Catvari Arya Satyani). Those words do mean "four," "noble," and "truths," respectively, however the noble part, Ariya, was a word referring to people, not things. It would do us good to recall what "noble" means in our own language. Like many words, noble has many meanings, but in this context the definition is "possessing superiority of mind, character, ideals, and/or morals," or "having excellent qualities." So we could say, "The Four Truths for the Spiritually Noble," or perhaps better, "The Four Truths that Lead to Spiritual Ennoblement." Further
, sacca (plural: saccani; Sanskrit: satya, plural: satyani) means "truth" or "real," or it can mean "actual thing." The implication is that the Buddha was talking about fundamental reality; things he actually experienced and knew to be true. Considering all of this, we should properly view this teaching as "Four Fundamental Facts Which, When Apprehended Properly, Will Enrich And Ennoble The Spiritual Seeker." It sure is a lot easier to just say, The Four Noble Truths. So I will from here on.
To recapitulate these Four Noble Truths:
There is suffering (birth, aging, illness, death, having what we don't want, wanting what we don't have)
There is a cause of suffering (our own desire/aversion/craving)
There is the cessation of suffering (enlightenment, awareness, "One-ness," "nirvana")
There is a practical path leading to the cessation of suffering (the Eightfold Path)
Buddhism can justifiably be thought of as a science of the mind; a discipline for mental and emotional health. Two and half millenia before Freud, the Buddha made amazingly insightful observations of the human mind. First, it was very clever of him to realize that our craving, or desire, was the crux of the issue. We can call it wanting. For example, one often thinks: "I want to not be in the financial straits I currently find myself in." Of course they don't put it that way to themselves. It's more like: "I'm so sick of these money problems!" or "I wish I wasn't such a broke-ass loser!" Almost instantly associated with this thought is the inverse: "I want a substantial inflow of money," (or "I need a good job," or "I gotta find a better way to make a living"). There's almost no end to the thoughts on this theme: "I wish I had gotten a post-graduate degree," "I should have gone to college," "Why didn't I finish that apprenticeship ten years ago?" "That bitch landlady is always riding my ass! She knows she's gonna get paid!" And so on. It's all wanting what we don't have, or having what we don't want. Desire/aversion. The inability to accept the present moment as it is.
Yes, being broke can be unpleasant. No one wants the landlord to post an eviction notice on their door or have their power turned off. But whatever is happening is what is happening, and all you can do is take the appropriate action if there is any action to take. Beyond that, what good does it do to continually turn the situation over in your mind, wishing that the present reality was a different reality? There's an old Zen Buddhist saying, "Wish in one hand and shit in the other; see which hand fills up first." Perhaps that's why they use only one hand for clapping. But I digress. The situation may be unpleasant, but the thinking and lamenting is a choice, and therefore, so is the suffering.
When the circumstances change for the better, our suffering is relieved, but only temporarily. Having not yet changed our own desire/aversion pattern, we are doomed to suffer again and repeatedly. A child wants, say, a shiny new bicycle for his birthday, and he wants it more than anything in the world. Scenario 1: He doesn't get it, and he is inconsolable. Scenario 2: He does get it, and he is filled with joy. We all know this experience, both of them, actually, very well. We've all felt the bitter disappointment of not getting something we desperately wanted, and the elation of getting it. As children, understandably, we made the connection that it was the thing itself, in either getting it or not getting it, that made us happy or sad. This is where we learned that getting things makes us happy, and so the pattern of acquiring stuff to fill our emptiness began. The right car, the right house, the right job, the right spouse. He who dies with the most toys wins, they say. Conversely, losing any of these things is real bad, we tell ourselves.
The Buddha's brilliant insight into this process, taking our kid and the bicycle example, was that it was never the bicycle that created the joy: it was the abatement of his wanting. He no longer wanted for anything in the universe, if only momentarily, and his joy knew no bounds. Of course the flipside is true as well: because his desire was intense, his suffering was nearly unbearable (not because he didn't get the bicycle). This desire/aversion dynamic is incessant and below our normal awareness. Until we begin a meditation practice, most of us have no idea just how incredibly busy our minds are, chitter-chattering away, bouncing from one thought to the next in an endless juggling act that only slows down in moments of deep concentration or inebriation. They call it the "monkey mind" in Buddhist circles. In meditation we begin to observe the monkey mind and we can see what it's doing. Remarkably, it's everywhere but the present moment. It's going over wish-lists for future gratification, or worrying over endless permutations of future mortification. When it's not doing that, it's mulling over past victories, regrets, resentments, and glories. From the mundane ("Should I thaw the chicken for dinner?") to the major ("I just know this mole on my neck is cancer!").
It isn't that any one thought is "bad," or that thinking is wrong and should be avoided at all costs. It's that the thinking is incessant, and generally not helpful, even harmful to us. Upon reflection we see that we live in a near-constant state of flux, moving between wanting what we don't have and resistant to having what we don't want. The result is a general feeling of emptiness coupled with, naturally, the desire to not feel that emptiness; to fill it with something. We try to fill it with things. The Buddha suggests another path.
